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Method

Put the porcini in a bowl with 250ml boiling water and leave to soak for 25 mins. Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion, carrot, garlic, rosemary and seasoning. Fry for 5 mins on a medium heat until softened. Drain the porcini, saving the liquid, and finely chop. Tip into the pan with the fresh mushrooms. Fry for another 5 mins, then add the stock, marsala or sherry, tomato purée, barley and strained porcini liquid.

Cook for 30 mins or until barley is soft, adding more liquid if it becomes too thick. Serve in bowls with parmesan sprinkled over, if desired.

Delicious and filling, but came out far too chunky for my taste - will experiment with halving the amount of barley and adding extra water/stock. Porcini mushrooms absolutely essential for this, but was successful with the following substitutions: parsley & garlic salt mix instead of the rosemary, no booze. Pre-soaking the barley worked a treat, try it if you find this recipe takes too long to cook.

I made this soup as I had loads of mushrooms to use up in the fridge. It was disgusting, I couldn't even eat it. I was really disappointed in it having read some of the good reviews.
I did not have any porcini mushrooms but made it exactly to the recipe apart from this. I won't be making it again unfortunately.

Wonderful recipe. Really deep flavours and great textures with the different sorts of mushrooms and the rest of the vegetables. I added a tiny tiny bit of unsalted butter in with the carrots and onions to get a richer flavour but I think it could easily have done without. We've just frozen the rest. Will definitely make again.

I used normal mushrooms and red wine instead of the marsala/sherry. Delicious! Agree, barley took almost an hour to soften but it was worth it in the end! Didn't need any extra flavours, will definitely be making this again!

After all the great ratigs I was a bit disapointed with the taste. Although the family (3 kids) ate it all up with cheesy garlic bread and we were all stuffed, I lacked some spice or strong taste. Maybe I should have simply added a dash of tabasco or worcester sauce to my bowl at the table. Will try again.

Delicious! I replaced the sherry with red wine because that's what I had in the house. Also, based on the comments here + the fact that my package of pearl barley called for a longer cooking time, I cooked the barley separately in the stock, tomato puree and red wine for a while before adding the sauteed veggies, because I didn't want the vegetables to boil to mush while waiting for the barley to be fully cooked.

I had some pearl barley to use up, so gave this a go. Quite nice - maybe the porcini mushrooms were slightly too strong for my liking. To make it suit my tastebuds more I covered it with grated cheddar cheese. There is nothing wrong with it - but it's not something I'm eager to put in a regular meal plan.

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